Written and edited by Norm Scott:
EDUCATE! ORGANIZE!! MOBILIZE!!!
Three pillars of The Resistance – providing information on current ed issues, organizing activities around fighting for public education in NYC and beyond and exposing the motives behind the education deformers. We link up with bands of resisters. Nothing will change unless WE ALL GET INVOLVED IN THE STRUGGLE!

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Antonucci on Teacher Unions and The War Within Plus NEA Convention Coverage

When union challengers upset
incumbents, however, it is almost always because the challenger
successfully painted the incumbent as too accommodating to the education
powers that be.

The problem for the unions’ establishment wing is that the internal
message leads their devotees to believe that such compromises,
collaborations, and accommodations are selling out the movement. They
are not always wrong about that.

One faction, existing in both unions [AFT and NEA], wants to man the barricades,
fight over every inch of territory, and take no prisoners. It sees
education reformers outside of the union sphere as either corporate
privatizers seeking to grasp some of the $640 billion this country
spends annually on public schools, or their tools. The most identifiable leaders of this militant faction are Karen
Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Alex Caputo-Pearl of
United Teachers Los Angeles, Bob Peterson of the Milwaukee Teachers’
Education Association, and Barbara Madeloni of the Massachusetts
Teachers Association.....

The militant wing is mostly hostile to CCSS, seeing the standards as
part and parcel of the corporate education-reform agenda. The
establishment wing has been forced to triangulate by defending the
standards but attacking the way they have been implemented.The split between the two factions was illustrated at the 2014 AFT
Convention. The delegation from Chicago introduced a resolution to place
the AFT in full opposition to CCSS, but it was handily defeated in
committee, a committee dominated by New York City’s United Federation of
Teachers, the backbone of the AFT’s establishment wing.

Instead, AFT delegates passed a resolution stating the union would
“continue to support the promise of CCSS, provided that a set of
essential conditions, structures and resources are in place.”Antonucci in Ed Week, Winter 2015

Mike is on his annual jaunt to cover the NEA convention and issued the a bunch of reports so far:

Embedded in one was a link to an in depth article he wrote for ed deform mouthpiece Ed Next. As always read him with the understanding that he is not a friend of teacher unions -- and backed by ed deform and anti-union elements. But I'm still a fan due to his level of analysis and good reporting. In fact he is the only one to report on the various factions in the unions.

As the Supreme Court takes up the issue of agency fee dues next year, this chart included in Mike's Ed Week piece is worth checking out. Imagine what it will look like if the Court rules against us.

Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, addresses a crowd during a rally in September 2012

To avoid becoming losers in the game of “more teacher-protective than
thou,” the leaders of the national teachers unions have to co-opt the
militant message without alienating the education world at large, or the
general public. This is a tricky dance, and it’s not uncommon for NEA
and AFT executive officers to make conflicting, if not contrary,
statements depending on which ears are listening.

When union officers address an audience of union activists, the world
is described in Manichaean terms. Standardized testing is not just
misused, it is “toxic.” Opponents are not just opponents, they are
adversaries “who want to destroy our democracy and our public
schools”—for money. These enemies are identified by name: the Koch
Brothers, the Cato Institute, Americans for Prosperity, Pearson, Inc.,
Democrats for Education Reform, Michelle Rhee, and Arne Duncan.

The only force standing in their way is the teachers union—“the
champions of equity,” who “define solutions that drive excellence and
success for all students,” as described by former NEA president Dennis
Van Roekel in his keynote address to the Representative Assembly in July
2014. Union activists, in the words of John Stocks, spoken two years
earlier, are “social justice patriots” who “put the power of our soul to
work to defend democracy, to fight for equal opportunity, and to create
a more just society.”

That plays well with the troops, whose enthusiasm and commitment are
needed to advance the agenda. Unfortunately for the teachers unions, the
wider world is not an echo chamber of their beliefs. To the general
public, many of whom have little idea what the NEA and the AFT actually
do, it sounds more than a little hyperbolic and self-congratulatory.

The external message cannot be so bellicose. Both the NEA and the AFT
need allies, including those who might not sign on to the totality of
the unions’ vision for public education and American politics. Even with
their opponents, they cannot escalate every confrontation to
Armageddon. Compromises occur.

Union officers are also aware that it is detrimental to their cause
to be constantly saying “no” to so many proposals for school reform.
Thus the external message is devoted to depicting an organization that
is forward-thinking and innovative when it comes to operating the
nation’s schools.

The problem for the unions’ establishment wing is that the internal
message leads their devotees to believe that such compromises,
collaborations, and accommodations are selling out the movement. They
are not always wrong about that.

While both national unions decry the corporate influence on
education, they have partnerships with large corporations on many
levels: sponsorships of union events, discount arrangements and credit
cards as part of member benefits packages, funding for joint projects,
etc. The NEA even went so far as to team up with Walden Media on a
book-buying initiative for needy children. Walden Media produced Waiting for Superman, a documentary about families trying to get their kids into charter schools. It was especially critical of teachers unions.

Union activists often depict the Gates Foundation as the mastermind
behind corporate education reform. But in 2009, when the foundation
announced it would award $335 million to a number of school districts
and charter schools to promote teacher effectiveness, the union response
was a far cry from the anticorporate rhetoric it regularly delivers to
its internal audience.“These districts, working with their unions and parents, were willing
to think out of the box, and were awarded millions of dollars to create
transparent, fair, and sustainable teacher effectiveness models,” said
AFT president Randi Weingarten.“Collaboration and multilevel integration are important when it comes
to transforming the teaching profession,” said then NEA president Van
Roekel. “These grants will go far in providing resources to help raise
student achievement and improve teacher effectiveness.”

The NEA’s own foundation received $550,000 from the Gates Foundation
to “improve labor-management collaboration.” The AFT accrued more than
$10 million from the Gates Foundation, until internal pressures forced
the union to end some of the grants. And of course, the Gates Foundation
helped bankroll the development of the Common Core State Standards
(CCSS), which both unions continue to officially support (see “Teachers
Unions and the Common Core,” features, Winter 2015).

1 comment:

To see what the Gates Foundation got for the collaboration of the AFT leadership with the Gates agenda see"Turning 'Collaboration' Into a Bad Word" @ Defend Public Education!http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/turning-collaboration-into-a-b/

Comments are welcome. Irrelevant and abusive comments will be deleted, as will all commercial links. Comment moderation is on, so if your comment does not appear it is because I have not been at my computer (I do not do cell phone moderating).

UFT Election Vote Comparison: 2004-10

A Personal Historical Perspective

Why Karen Lewis Reads Ed Notes

"A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

What media call "philanthropy" for the public schools are actually seed monies to establish a private "market" in publicly-financed education - an enterprise worth trillions if successfully penetrated by corporate America. Cory Booker, one of the "New Black Leaders" financed by the filthy rich, is key to creating a "nationwide corporate-managed schools network paid for by public funds but run by private managers.

"Ed Reformers" want to cash in on public education and to control its content and outcome, not improve it. Provide great education? Baby boomers had as close as this country has ever gotten to it when we were growing up. The Ed Reform Movement has no interest in seeing such a well-educated, democratically astute population ever again.

History of the UFT Pre-Weingarten Years

This award-winning series of articles by Jack Schierenbeck originally appeared in the New York Teacher in 1996 and 1997.

Naturally, from a certain point of view. But, despite certain biases, Schierenbeck, a great guy, was one of the best NY Teacher reporters so this is worth reading. Jack suffered a debilitating stroke many years ago (I used to get secret donations to ed notes from him through a 3rd source.)

“The schism in the union over radical politics [is] a major reason for stalling the growth of a teacher union for decades.” Revolutionary politics and ideology take center stage, as the original Teachers Union becomes a battlefield, pitting leftist against leftist and splitting the union.

Clarence Taylor's "Reds at the Blackboard" focused on the old Teachers Union which disbanded in 1964 after suffering from anti-left attacks.

Effective Union Organizing

A video series put together by Jason Mann from the British Columbia Federation of Teachers about social media and how to use it for effective union organizing.

The first series was called New Media For Union Activists Roadmap and it's still available on-line at:http://www.newmediabootcamp.ca/welcome/I watched some of them and need to rewatch as they are loaded with information.

The second series started last week and it's called "Online Campaigning for Union Activists"

You Don't Have A Choice - Join the Revolt

Hedges says, There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history.

Ex-Harlem Success Teacher Comments on Eva the Diva

I am a former Harlem Success teacher. Not many people who work/worked for her like her very much. I once made the comment that she is very nice when I first was hired. Two of her closest colleague responded immediately almost in unison, "Eve is not nice!" Over time I realized that there was a lot of political games going on. Another colleague once said to me that he was tired of "being part of a political campaign." Sending out 15,000 applications for only 400 seats in a school is reprehensible. The money that paid for those mass mailings could have paid the yearly salary of another teacher not to mention the heartache of all those parents who applied but did not get a spot. She does good work trying to give disadvantaged students a quality public school education but at a great cost to staff AND the school's educational budget! school budget.

GEM's Julie Cavanagh Debates E4E member on NY1 on LIFO and Seniority

Davis Guggenheim Compared to Riefenstahl

“Waiting for Superman" is the second most intellectually dishonest piece of documentary work I have seen. It is surpassed only by Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," the pro-Hitler propaganda classic, in that regard. Uses personal narratives of adorable children to create narrative suspense that overrides public policy discussion with pure emotion in unscrupulous attack on teachers and their unions, among others

Timothy TysonProfessor of African American Studies and HistoryDuke University

A Familiar Voice on Unions

"We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison. We must reduce workers salaries and take away their right to strike"- Adolf Hitler, May 2, 1933

How Teaching Experience Makes a Difference

Even as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee and others around the nation are arguing for experienced teachers to be laid off regardless of seniority, every single study shows teaching experience matters. In fact, the only two observable factors that have been found consistently to lead to higher student achievement are class size and teacher experience, so that it’s ironic that these same individuals are trying to undermine both.- Leonie Haimson on Parents Across America web site

Outsource our children

Weingarten/Gates Foundation announce drone-driven teacher evaluation

According to a press release issued by the Gates Foundation, the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, these three have entered a ground-breaking partnership to evaluate teachers utilizing the drone technology that has revolutionized warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. A bird-size device floats up to 400 feet above a classroom and instantly beams live video of teachers in action to agents at desks at Teacher Quality Inspection Stations established by the AFT and the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

When asked if the drones were authorized to drop bombs on teachers who exhibit inadequacy, Chester E. Finn, Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, replied, "Don't be ridiculous. Gates money puts other methods at our disposal."

Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.5-million-member American Federation of Teachers said the powerful union has signed on to the drone project...

Teacher Value-Added Data Dumping by Norm Scott

The Real Reason Behind Push for Standardized Tests: It's All About the Adults

On standardized testing in our schools

A must read article about the standardized test industry.Written by an insider who has worked as a test scorer, the article outlines a multinational industry based on an army of temporary workers paid by the piece at $0.30 to $0.70 per test, translated in the need to grade 40 tests per hour to make a $12 salary. The article goes on to show how the companies gauge the grading "results" based on the need to ensure new contracts to continue profiting off of our youth. The original article is from Monthly Review. Here it is on Schools Matter blog.

From Sharon Higgins

Parallels between America today and Germany in the 1920's and early 30's

"Resentment and obstruction are all the right wing in America have to peddle. Their policies are utterly discredited. Their ideology - even by its own standards - is a sham. They are so bereft of leaders, their de facto leader is a former drug addicted, thrice-divorced radio talk show host. That is literally the best they can muster. But they have built a national franchise inciting the downwardly mobile to blame the government, not the right, for their problems, exactly as Hitler did in the 1920s."

Chicago View of Unity/UFT on Charters

After many meetings and debates, the Chicago delegation succeeded in working with the New York United Federation of Teachers, Local 2 (UFT) to push the AFT to take stronger stands on charter school accountability and school closings — though many delegates from Chicago would have liked the language to have been even stronger.

Generally speaking, the New York delegation represented organizing charters as the best model for handling their role in reshaping unions, despite the fact that according to many reports few charter schools in New York have been organized as is the case in Chicago. This logic is the same touted by the Progressive Caucus of the AFT. The few that have been organized are a part of the UFT local though they have separate contracts negotiated with the help of UFT. The Chicago delegation reflection the mindset that allowing new charters to continue to proliferate while attempting to organize existing charters is an end game in which public schools and the union lose.

Ed Notes Greatest Hits: HSA Rally and Founding of GEM

Angel Gonzalez and I attended that rally and used the footage to promote our conference on Mar. 28, 2009, which is where the concept of a group like GEM emerged. Until then we had basically been a committee of ICE working with the NYCORE high stakes testing group. The actions of Eva and crew helped spawn GEM. Mommie Dearest!!

I have more video somewhere. I was hoping to get Leni Riefenstahl to edit it but she died. We would have called it "Triumph of the Hedge Fund Operators."

Video of Chicago's George Schmidt and CORE Shredding Arne Duncan and the Chicago Corporate Model

Great Post on Teacher Quality at the Morton School

I'm very tired of the myth that schools are bursting at the seams with apathetic, unskilled, surly, child-hating losers who can't get jobs doing anything else. I recently figured that, counting high school and college where one encounters many teachers in the course of a year, I had well over 100 teachers in my lifetime, and I can only say that one or two truly had no place being in a classroom.